How to Monetize Your Blog

I have been blogging for 4 years now and it was something that started off as nothing more than a hobby and a way to keep my friends in the loop about what I was doing. As part of an art project that my friend Jonathan Bunge was doing, I agreed to let him add some attractive designs to the front page of my blog and before I knew it I was starting to get some people asking questions about who had designed it and where they could get similar designs for their own webpage or blog. I suddenly realized the power of community that a blog can bring and so I started to redouble my efforts in terms of how I was blogging and before I knew it, I was starting to make some money from it.

If you would like to monetize your blog, here is how you can do it.

Traffic

Before I talk about the ways in which you can earn online, it is important thatI mention that none of these methods will yield you any revenue unless you have sufficient traffic coming in to your site. Once you have worked hard on social media and with SEO techniques and you can bring strong levels of traffic in to your site, you can start to make some real cash.

Advertising

Advertisers are more than wiling to pay for space on your blog where they can expose their client to potential new customers. In doing this you can earn some great money and you can accept advertising either within a blog posts or by placing banners across the header, the sidebar and the footer of any of your webpages.

Affiliates

Affiliates are a great way of making some extra cash from your site and there are many bloggers out there who are making 5 figures from affiliate income alone. The way this works is that you advertise or even talk about a particular product or service which you love, should someone click on the link to that product and purchase it, you will receive income by way of a percentage of the sale. Affiliate partnerships are win-win situations for many companies and bloggers as the blogger earns a percentage and the affiliate partner makes a sale from an external source, potentially a new client for them.

Direct Selling

If you are seeing strong traffic figures on your blog then there is nothing stopping you from selling directly to your viewers as long as you are selling things which are relevant to your blog. For example, if you have a logo on your blog then you could sell t-shirts with your logo on them, if your viewers like you webpage enough then they will have no problem parting with a small amount of money to grab one of the t-shirts and you can make a great piece of additional income by doing this.